Odjig, who turned 88 on September 11, was born in 1919 at Wikwemikong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, to a Potawatomi father and a British war bride mother. Her grandfather was a tombstone carver who taught her to draw and paint. After the deaths of her mother and grandfather in 1938, she was taken to live in Parry Sound, and eventually moved to Toronto at the beginning of the Second World War. There, she met her first husband, Paul Somerville, whose military post took them to the West Coast. While she always enjoyed art, it was not until their two sons were in school that Odjig began to paint seriously.